Tag: Events

Today is the day. Early start, loads of boxes, a day at the QUAD in Derby and for me a day behind a table in the dealers room getting to see some of the fabulous people who support our work in a myriad of ways, buying stuff not being the least of it.

It’s meant to be another warm weekend too. Todd and Reynard recommend books to help with the heat.

At 4pm we will have the signing of Children of Artifice with the fabulous Danie Ware! There will be biscuits and books and badges, all good stuff.

I am also pleased to announce that you kindle people should now be able to Skytown, Children of Artifice and Into the Blight to your collection. And you definitely should, they are wonderful.

If it is your first Edge.Lit have a blast, it is a lovely friendly convention, if you aren’t able to make it, maybe we will see you next year, in the mean time all our titles are available on Amazon and check out the guest list for some great writers to read.

Normally at this time I do the ‘what panels am I on’ post for Edge.lit, but somehow this year I am not on any! I am free to do whatever I want, so obviously I will be behind a table all day in the dealers area and then almost certainly at Ask for dinner.

We will have many many books by all sorts of fabulous people, some of whom are also at the event.

Particularly of note is Danie Ware who is having a low key launch of Children of Artifice at our table in the dealers room at 4pm. Danie will be happy to sign books or anything else you want, within reason, and there are fabulous Artifice cookies to devour from 4pm.

I will be bringing some of our travel mugs, tote bags and notebooks to sell too, so if you are looking for gifts for bookish loved ones, or yourself, Fox Spirit can provide. Also look out for the Foxy goodies in your attendee goodie bags.

Events:24th February at Forbidden Planet there is a small press expo. Fox Spirit will be taking part to showcase our two titles ‘And the Fox Crows’ by V.C. Linde and Dark Travellings by Ian Whates. We will also be formally launching ‘Multiverse’ by Jan Siegel. Jan and Ian will be joining us to chat and sign books. Ian is also of course head of exemplary small press Newcon and will be there in that role as well. An afternoon of Small Press Big Stories, please join us if you can.

10th March is States of Independence at De Montfort University Leicester, and we will have a table at the event with books and merchandise and friendly banter. States of Indie is focused on Indie publishing and has a great showing of poetry. It’s put together each year by the team at Five Leaves Books.

We are close to the end of the series now, with The Evil Genius Guide and Reflections coming out this summer, which will bring us to a total of 158 flash and short fiction stories and poems, over ten pocket sized volumes.

We are delighted to announce that an official launch party for African Monsters will be taking place on 3rd March at London Forbidden Planet, after which we will head off to the pub for more celebrating.

A number of the authors and artists will be attending along with Aunty Fox and both editors of the book. We will have badges identifying us just in case you haven’t met us before.

The format will be relaxed and casual with a quick introduction then mingling and signing of books. If you would like to ensure a book is waiting for you in the signing area they are available to pre order on the Forbidden Planet website.

We hope to see lots of you there. It’s our first London launch and we are all very excited.

In other news we are co hosting another Fox Bites with DMU Bookshop Leicester. At ‘Unromantic Tales’ on 11th Feb local writers will be reading short stories and excerpts that have nothing at all to do with romance and Valentines day. There may be something of a horror leaning. These are totally free events with drinks and nibbles, so do come along, enjoy some readings and support a local bookstore if you can.

For more information on this and other Fox Bites mini reading events please join the facebook group.

The last bit of news for now is that Fox Spirit are the Creative Leicestershire featured business this month. Creative Leicestershire are a local organisation supporting small creative businesses and helping bring them together. If you are in the region and are building a business in a creative industry it’s worth checking them out for opportunities for support and advice.

Books and Fox Field Bag packed we headed off to Nottingham and the East Midlands Conference Centre for another FantasyCon.

The Event

I arrived on the Saturday morning just as the Friday nighters were emerging for breakfast and in good time to drop some books off with Pendragon Press who I owe a huge thanks to for hosting homeless books, along with Alchemy for taking some copies of Wicked Women, which two of their editors had done under FS. I then headed to my first panel Monster Mash Up with Carrie Buchanan, Cassandra Khaw, Tim Lebbon, Will Macmillan Jones and Moderated by Jon Oliver who had karaoke throat. There was an examination of popular monsters, consideration as to whether there is anything new or we are just looking now to the very old, whether the real monsters are modern politicians, serial killers or every day scumbags and some thoughtful comments on the need for sensitivity when delving into other cultures for exciting new monsters.

In the afternoon I moderated a panel on Marketing ‘Turn up the volume’ with Sophie Calder, Jo Fletcher, Matt Shaw, Graeme Reynolds and Danie Ware, which started with a fire alarm. Sadly we lost 15 minutes of what was a really interesting panel which meant I only asked about half my questions and the audience were cut a little short to. There were some excellent insights about how publishing has changed in terms of online presence and also in store behaviour, the need for authors to be willing to do a lot themselves and what publishers can offer in terms of guidance and support. In the audience questions we touched on where writers can go for support and advice, some of the well established writing groups that can offer advice, regional writing communities or organisations that offer courses and advice. Many courses run by Creative Leicestershire are completely free.

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in both and I hope everyone else enjoyed them too. A warning to future panel planners, if you put Carrie and I together again and please do, we may continue to riff on the most tasteless news items we can find. 😉

After that I was free to attend some panels which I did and I have to say the standard this year was excellent. Well done to Richard Webb for a huge amount of work and thought!

The Non Humans panels was entertaining and interested and I particularly enjoyed Ren going super dark about AI and people and love and Adrian and Ren discussing ethics and science. Some interesting thoughts generally on what makes something human and writing the alien from all the panel members which included Janet Edwards and Deborah Install and some very nice one liners from Gareth Powell.

The screenwriting panel proved fascinating even as a non screen writer Stephen Volk, Jason Arnopp, Ellen Gallagher, Stephen Gallagher and Gavin Williams were lead through a fascinating discussion by Catherine Hill. Ellen’s passion and knowledge were a stand out for me in that panel.

On Sunday I attended the Audio panel lead by the incomparable Alasdair Stuart and featuring Chris Barnes, James Goss and Emma Newman who covered getting into it in the first place (various kinds of accident seem to feature heavily), what it involves, why they love it and numerous other things including a number of wonderful resources that had us all scribbling or typing away. A very funny, insightful and smart panel and perfect for the more general audience.

It sounds as though readings, launches and other things all went well, several of our writers were involved over the weekend and I was glad to hear Jo Thomas had a good and well attended panel, Ruth Booth’s readings, including her Winter Tales poem were well recieved, Chloe rocked the Poetry Slam, Steve Poore had a good launch with his title for Kristell Ink and I hope everything went well for the everyone else. While we were there we got some stock signed and even sold a few books.

Of course one of the great joys of any convention is seeing old friends, making new ones, finally meeting people you’ve known online for ages, talking to people who actually understand what you are saying and get the references and are all excited about the same things! Learning new things, having better brains than yours to pick for advice and being around so many incredible inspiring people. The collective levels of creativity at FantasyCon are mind blowing.

The whole event was well organised, ran smoothly and the teams behind it and running it all on the ground did an amazing job. The panelists were wonderful and I heard good things from everyone who attended panels. A huge thanks to the FantasyCon team and good luck to the 2016 FCon the T’sea team!

The Awards

We were on three shortlists Best Short Story for Gaie Sebold’s story in Wicked Women, Best Fantasy Novel with Breed by K.T. Davies and Best Indie Press for the second year running. I thought in spite of very stiff competition Breed was in with a chance so was pretty nervous.

Juliet McKenna did a sterling job, noting the loss of Graham Joyce which got a strong and emotional response from the community and neatly rounding up the sad puppies saga and moving on from it very nicely indeed. There was a standing ovation when Juliet was very deservingly awarded the Karl Edward Wagner Award.

It seemed to be a night for people being caught off guard and speechless. Literally, most of the winners had prepared nothing! Those that had sometimes did so on the back of a menu as a just in case. I think it was all the lovelier for it. I thoroughly enjoyed the delighted and flabberghasted responses of people unused to accepting awards, of which somehow I found myself one!

Breed lost to the marvellous Frances Harding who is a worthy winner so huge congratulations to Francis. Best Short went to Emma Newman which again is a great winner and I am delighted! But Fox Spirit Books did get Best Indie Press and I was shaking so much with shock of it I had to hold the podium with both hands while I stumbled out something about the skulk being an amazing group to wok with and a wonderful community and a shout out to Alasdair Stuart for being integral in conning me into it in the first place. Also thanks to the judges for ploughing through a stack of material on usb sticks (we published 18 titles in 2014, I don’t know how).

If you will all indulge me I will now go on to repeat my sentiments a little more coherently:

Fox Spirit is barely over three years old, we have over 30 titles out and have worked with a huge number of incredible writers and artists in that time. I am deeply proud of everything we have done both in terms of books and the community the Skulk have built for themselves through shared TOC’s and events like Fcon. It is an honour to help these stories get out there and to watch you all support and encourage each other.

I want to say as well that behind the scenes Daz (our copy editor), Gav (our formatter) and Vince who picks up a lot of layouts and things last minute, do a tremendous amount to help make FS work. I would be lost, utterly without their hard work and support. There are many others who help at various times in various ways and I am utterly grateful to them too.

Alasdair Stuart, Kate Laity and Steven Savile were all instrumental in the great small press con job, for which I love them all the more.

In the last year my business partner and also Mr Fox have provided a huge amount of support in a variety of ways to help keep FS going strong.

Our readers, reviewers, retweeters, likers, sharers etc are amazing and we value you all and everyone in the BFS who nominated, voted, judged on any award (I’ve done it, it’s hard!) you are all hugely important to us and thank you.

So 2016 is another busy year and this one isn’t over, so I better get back to work but this lovely wooden thing is truly a credit to the whole skulk!

A full list of the Winners for this year can be found here. A wonderful crowd I am honoured to have been part of!

We had our first ‘open mic’ reading event at Leicester’s Cafe Malveen last Saturday and I think we are calling that a success! The Cafe turned over enough in coffee and cake to invite us back and six local authors read for five minutes from six very different books.

Fox Bites isn’t aimed at just Fox Spirit writers, it’s aimed at all the local writers who want to practice reading or try a piece on a live audience, a nice friendly audience of people who love books.

It ran smoothly with three readings, a five minute coffee break and three more readings. The readings were all well delivered and warmly received and in between there was a pleasant babble of conversation, people catching up with each other and meeting other local writers/readers.

We will be providing the footage of the readings to the readers for distribution on their own sites. We’ve also put together a facebook group where we will post details of readers and their stories each month.

If you would like to be at the next Leicester Fox Bites or would like to bring Fox Bites to your city please contact me at adele@ foxspirit.co.uk for information.

We are in the midst of getting books out, particularly ‘The Stars Seem so Far Away’ the re release of ‘Dreambook’ and ‘Emily Nation’ three very different and very awesome titles to kick off 2015.

We also have events to plan. We are going to be very active locally organising live reading sessions and panels. The Skulk will be in force at this years Edge.Lit having a joint event with Boo Books (Working title Fox Boo).

…and in case all that wasn’t enough we will shortly be launching our new Combat Sports imprint FoxGloves which we are aiming to Kickstart this summer.

Finally, because we never take a breath here in the fox den, we will also be bringing you news of Fennec our childrens imprint soon along with developments under our HEMA idenity Vulpes. It’s a busy time for the whole skulk so please follow us on twitter and facebook and visit the site regularly or even better, sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss anything.

And while you wait for our new titles, we have plenty to entertain you already out there!

We were at the first Leicester Comic Con on Saturday and it was a huge success. Traders took over the ground floor of the newly refurbed Silver Arcade while Alasdair Stuart hosted guest speakers on the top floor.

The team of Yellow Shirts (some of which were incognito) did an amazing job of taking care of attendees and traders, from helping to unload first thing to ensuring water was available, doing mercy runs for coffee and food and generally making sure they were visible and available. I had the great pleasure of being in charge of recruiting and running the vols and I am very proud of them all. Really once things got going I was practically superfluous.

I had FS author and editor Kate Laity and kidnapped young person (who belongs to a friend) Charlie to assist me on the FS Stall, which looked fantastic with the gorgeous books and some extra treats in the form of prints and t shirts by FS illustrator Kieran Walsh.

We sold Extricate to Catwoman which seemed fitting, hung out with a Storm Trooper, hugged lots of people we know, including passing FS writers Peter Allison, Ren Warom (with spawn), Alasdair Stuart and Hardeep Sangha and chatted to lots of new and lovely people. We sold plenty of books and other things, all the cake got eaten and the atmosphere was wonderful. Couldn’t have asked for a better day.